Official Steve Jobs biography due in 2012

An authorized biography about the life Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is set to arrive early next year, the Associated Press reports. The book, from publisher Simon & Schuster, is the first of its kind to be published with the help and permission of Jobs.

Entitled “iSteve: The Book of Jobs,” the book is being written by former CNN executive and Time magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson, who has written best-selling books about Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein and has worked on the Jobs biography since 2009. Isaacson is said to have interviewed a wide variety of people close to Jobs, including friends and family, co-workers and competitors alike.

“This is the perfect match of subject and author, and it is certain to be a landmark book about one of the world’s greatest innovators,” Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp said in a statement. “Just as he did with Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson is telling a unique story of revolutionary genius.”

Jobs, 56, has been on medical leave from Apple since January of this year allegedly due to issues related to a curable form of pancreatic cancer.

Isaacson has been labeled by colleagues as one of the most well-connected writers available. “If there is one thread that runs through his long career in journalism and public service,” writes Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who worked with Isaacson at Time, in Fortune, “it’s his talent for spotting the most influential people in any room and finding a way to get close to them.”

When he’s not building material for the Jobs biography, Isaacson works as the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank.

So, what kind of juicy insider tidbits can anxious Apple fans expect from the upcoming biography about Jobs, a notoriously private figure?

Probably nothing particularly controversial, says Newser‘s Michael Wolff, a (sometimes-despised) media industry observer. While it’s always possible that Isaacson will reveal the side of Steve Jobs that’s not fit for a press release, Wolff suggests that such an outcome is unlikely. Isaacson is a “devoted company man,” says Wolff, “an eager-to-please social animal whose work has always been proficient and commercial, but which has never broken new ground.”

Regardless of its groundbreaking nature, the Jobs biography is sure to be a hot seller, especially in the tech world.